Everybody in Harper's Ferry agrees that Jefferson stood at Jefferson's Rock and said something appropriate, and any one of them will try to tell you what he said, but each version will be different.
A young lady told me that he said: "This view is worth a trip across the Atlantic Ocean." A young man in a blue felt hat of the fried-egg variety said that Jefferson declared, with his well-known simplicity: "This is the grandest view I ever seen." An old man who had to go through the tobacco chewer's pre-conversational rite before replying to my question gave it as: "Pfst!--They ain't nothin' in Europe ner Switzerland ner nowheres else, I reckon', to beat this-here scenery." The man at the drug store quoted differently alleging the saying to have been: "Europe has nothing on this": whereas the livery stable man's version was: "This has that famous German river--the Rhine River don't they call it ?--skinned to death." Whatever Jefferson's remark was, there has been added to the spectacle at Harper's Ferry, since his day, a new feature, which, could he have but seen it, must have struck him forcibly, and might perhaps have caused him to say more.
At a lofty point upon the steep wall of Maryland Heights, across the Potomac from the town, far, far up upon the side of the cliff, commanding a view not only of both rivers, but of their meeting place and their joint course below, and of the lovely contours of the Blue Ridge Mountains, fading to smoky coloring in the remote distance, there has, of late years, appeared the outline of a gigantic face, which looks out from its emplacement like some Teutonic god in vast effigy, its huge luxuriant mustaches pointing East and West as though in symbolism of the conquest of a continent.

A blue and yellow background, tempered somewhat by the elements, serves to attract attention to the face and to the legend which accompanies it, but the thing one sees above all else, the thing one recognizes, is the face itself, with its look half tragic, half resigned, yet always so inscrutable: for it is none other than the beautiful brooding countenance of Gerhard Mennen, the talcum-powder gentleman.
* * * * * The great story of Harper's Ferry is of course the John Brown story.
Joseph I.C.Clarke, writing in the New York "Sun" of Sir Roger Casement's execution for treason in connection with the Irish rebellion, compared him with John Brown and also with Don Quixote.

The spiritual likeness between these three bearded figures is striking enough.

All were idealists; all were fanatics.

Brown's ideal was a noble one--that of freedom--but his manner of attempting to translate it into actuality was that of a madman.